


Keep me so Unwell

by sugarboat



Series: The Bee Movie, but every time they say the word 'bee' someone becomes a living hive [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Power Swap, Body Horror, First Kiss, Implications of Bad Things Happening, Living Hive!Jon, M/M, Negotiations, of the becoming a monster variety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 18:57:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18079058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarboat/pseuds/sugarboat
Summary: Martin asks Jon for a favor, because being covered in bees is better than being alone, right?





	Keep me so Unwell

**Author's Note:**

> Technically a prequel to the other fic in this series, but both are stand-alone.

“This is probably going to hurt,” Jon tells him for what has to be the hundredth time this afternoon alone. 

Martin is in Jon’s flat, which is a fact he’s still acclimating himself to. He has a mug of tea that Jon made for him in his hands and Jon’s standing awkwardly in the frame of the doorway that leads to the back hall. Jon has a collection of neatly folded towels gripped white knuckle tight in one of his hands and all things considered, it’s hard to be annoyed at him for anything right now. Even his mildly neurotic repetition, and Martin’s struggling a bit to identify when all _that_ happened. The warm, fuzzy feeling in his chest that’s kicked up by the pinched expression on Jon’s face. 

“I know,” Martin reassures him, and hides a smile behind the rim of his cup when Jon huffs out a long-suffering sigh. 

“I need you to consider this more seriously, Martin,” he says sternly. Like they haven’t talked all of this to death already. 

“I have,” Martin insists. “I think I’ve made it pretty clear, Jon – I don’t have a lot of options.” 

Stupid, Martin chides himself for what also has to be the hundredth time this afternoon alone. Stupid Martin’s gotten himself into another stupid corner, and now he has to do something even more stupid to get out of it. 

His rather spiral-shaped self-deprecation is derailed by Jon coming into the room. He sits on the couch beside Martin and peers at him intently, settling the towels on the coffee table. It’s enough to get Martin’s heart rate spiked. His hands feel clammy. He wipes them against his slacks one palm at a time and clears his throat. Tries desperately to keep his mind firmly rooted in the actualities of the situation. 

There’s no time for him to daydream, after all. To imagine that Jon’s brought him back to his place for another reason. That Jon’s brought _himself_ into closer proximity than Martin had ever imagined he would get for another reason. Maybe the frown could be Jon being quietly nerve-riddled before he pulls himself together, before he pulls the two of them together. 

It’s a little easier to keep his thoughts on track when Jon turns his head to the side, suddenly, and the ugly, honeycombed skin of his cheek is on full display. Martin feels a bit faint. There’s a bee nestled at the bottom of one of the holes bored into his neck. 

He knows it’s rude, and usually he’s better about this kind of thing. But they’re so close, Martin can’t help but to study the shape of the hive’s nesting. Hexagonal holes that should be made of- of wax, or something, instead chewed out of Jon’s skin and tissue.

“You do realize this is exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you?” Jon says, and Martin flinches, startled out of his staring. Jon puts a hand against his own cheek, obscuring the hive and looking utterly human with the imperfection covered. 

“Sorry,” Martin blurts out. If it’s possible, Jon looks even less impressed at that response than before. “I-I know, Jon. I’ve thought about it, I promise you.” 

It’s this. It’s either this or the Lonely, and Martin- he can’t, he just can’t. It makes his entire chest clench and hurt, thinking about Peter. 

Jon’s frowning at him. Martin feels another hollow, unpleasant constriction around his ribcage, that Jon’s still got his hand covering his face. It’s just casual enough of a gesture to speak to familiarity.

“Look,” Martin begins, and immediately stops again when Jon angles his entire body towards him and starts- Jon starts undoing the buttons of his own shirt. “Wait, uh- what are you-? What?” 

“I need to show you something,” Jon says. Tone utterly at odds with the fact that he’s stripping apropos of absolutely nothing. Martin’s fingers flutter awkwardly along the sides of his mug, like he wants to stop Jon, like he’s still too cautious to actually touch him. 

“I- You do? Do you?” 

“Yes. I think it’s only fair.” 

Martin is, yeah, okay, Martin’s totally lost now. Should he be taking his shirt off, too? But Jon doesn’t seem to be expecting any reciprocation. Martin sets his cup on his coaster. 

With his oxford shrugged off, Jon’s just in a dark t-shirt that clings a bit more to his form than Martin would have thought was his style. He isn’t complaining at all, even if he is still a bit, well, confused. He feels his face flush hot when his eyes finally make their way up to Jon’s again and he finds the other man watching him expectantly. 

“Uh,” Martin says. Jon rolls his eyes. 

“Here.”

Jon unceremoniously grabs the hem of his shirt and pulls the whole thing off, and oh, it was _literally_ clinging to him, because it was wet with- with hive stuff. Whatever fills those combs, a syrupy, glistening fluid that Martin has been trying very hard not to identify as honey. That swooping lightheadedness is back, as Martin takes in what must be the full breadth of Jon’s infestation.

It is, to be frank, a bit disgusting. Raw, oozing sores everywhere that put Martin in mind of some of the less fortunate patients he’s seen touring those long-term treatment centers. When the staff haven’t turned them frequently enough, where their skin’s just collapsed into itself in deep, pitted ulcers. He can’t see most of the hive – the bees that make up the collective – though he can see where the holes aren’t slowly dribbling that sap-stuff, they’re filled with fuzzy little bodies. 

An unwarrantedly large part of himself is concerned with the rigid angles Jon’s holding himself at. Like Jon’s locked every muscle in a bid to not pull away. 

“Well,” Jon says, sardonic and with his lips twisting in what could be a self-deprecating little smile if it wasn’t so tense. “There you have it. This is what you’re asking me for, Martin.” 

“This is supposed to, what, scare me?” Jon gapes at him a bit then. As much as someone like Jon can really gape. “I mean, I’m not going to- to lie to you, Jon – this is, uh, you know, not ideal? But I did- I mean, I had assumed there was more to it than- than that.” 

_That_ indicated with a bit of an awkward wave towards Jon’s cheek. Jon swallows. Martin shifts a bit closer to him, wary of the tense lines of his body. It kind of feels like he’s approaching a stray, reading that response to flee in every inch of Jon’s countenance. 

“Can I…?” Martin asks, and then has to clear his throat in the middle. Jon is just sort of staring at him. “Do you mind if I, uh, look a bit- closer?”

“Oh! Uh, I suppose that would be- yes, that’s- it’s- it’s fine.” 

Martin kind of scoots across the distance between them, until his knee is bumping into one of Jon’s. He raises his hands slowly. Doesn’t miss how Jon’s own clench into fists and then forcibly relax. His heart is pounding hard enough to hurt, and Martin almost retreats too, but then his hands are on Jon’s shoulders, fingers carefully away from any of the hive. 

Then he’s leaning even closer and Jon is letting him, until he’s close enough that he can see Jon’s skin prickle with gooseflesh when Martin trails his fingers lightly over a lattice of holes gnawed out of the muscle and skin over his collar. He’s close enough to take careful note of the way Jon shivers under his hands. 

“That- Does it hurt?” Martin asks him. 

“No,” Jon says immediately, and then seems to think better of it. “Well. Yes, it hurts a bit – quite a lot, sometimes – but it’s not- It isn’t all, uh, pain.” Jon pauses, and swallows, and says, “People don’t, ah, don’t touch it often.” 

Martin wants very badly to touch Jon. To keep touching him, as he trails his fingers down Jon’s chest, across skin that’s warm and unbroken. He wonders what it would have been like to know Jon without any of this. Tim had said Jon used to be a researcher with the Institute, before the hive. Would they have gotten along if they’d met? 

The nesting around his ribcage seems to be the most expansive. It’s hard to tell how deep it goes, but there are holes built all between the slats of his ribcage, and the combs that aren’t filled are dark at their bases. Martin’s fingers are getting sticky from the honey that catches on their edges. He has the awful, intrusive urge to lick them clean. Jon’s skin here seems more solid, too. Less irritated. 

“Is this where…?” Marin begins, but doesn’t know how to word what it is that he’s asking. 

“Yes,” Jon says anyway. “That’s where it, uh, started. I don’t know that it would necessarily be the same for- for you.” 

Martin clears his throat. This is- okay, this is probably achieving what Jon set out to. Actually thinking about where they would start _living_ inside him. Both of his hands are on Jon’s ribs, rising with the tidal ebbs and flows of his breathing. Apparently they haven’t punctured a lung or anything. Or they’ve repaired it. He slides his hand outward, and down, and Jon makes a bit of a strangled noise in his throat that makes Martin jerk his touch away entirely. 

“Are you all right?” he asks, and then blinks, because he’s pretty sure there are more bees around than there were before. 

The correct response to seeing them crawling along the slopes of Jon’s shoulders is probably disgust. Or horror. Trepidation, at least, that they might be gathering for what’s meant to be happening soon. What is going to happen soon. But it’s hard to not feel a bit, well, endeared? At the way Jon’s lifted a hand to let them crawl and cuddle into his palm. Two of them still walking along his shoulder bump head first into each other. 

“I’m fine,” Jon answers. Not looking at Martin, but at his hand still, flexing his fingers and palm and letting the bees go where they might. 

“Good, that’s- that’s good.” Martin winces. None of that is what he wants to say. 

He wants to tell Jon he can relax, that Martin isn’t planning on running away from him. That Martin doesn’t think he’s horrific or even really all that monstrous at all. It’s absurd, absolutely, to be thinking about how he wants to comfort the man who is a living embodiment of, supposedly, Corruption. The man who Martin is unequivocally asking to fundamentally harm him. 

At least as absurd as how much his mind is wandering from the topic. He wonders if there isn’t more to the hive’s nesting than Jon has shown him yet, where his trousers are still concealing him. It’s hard not to reconceptualize the feeling of Jon shivering from his touch, combined with flashes of him licking his lips, staring at Martin so intently, like he’s doing now-

Oh, like he’s doing now. 

“Martin,” Jon says, peering at him a moment longer before he looks away again. “I need to- You have to be sure that this what you want.”

“Well, I don’t know how much I want it, really,” Martin says, quickly barreling onwards when Jon looks stricken. “No, I mean, I want you to do this, I do. I just- It’s the best of a bad situation?” 

“The lesser of two evils,” Jon says, somewhat sarcastically. And then he says, again, “It’s going to hurt.” 

“I know that, Jon.” 

“It might kill you.” 

“I- Yeah, I figured that might be a possibility.” Martin fiddles with the hem of his jumper as an awkward moment settles around them. “Uh, do you want to?” 

“Do I want to what?” Jon asks, which is fair. 

“Uh, do you want to- to do this? To me?” That’s not quite right. “For me!” 

“That’s-” Jon says, and then he stops and frowns, his lips twisting while he searches for words. “I don’t not want to?” 

“Okay, you know, I think maybe I’d better just- better just go, then-”

“Martin,” Jon almost sighs, sounding inexplicably annoyed. But he’s leaned forward, too, his hand warm around where he’s grabbed Martin’s wrist, keeping him from leaving. “I-I don’t want you to think-” He tries, and then starts again. “I wouldn’t offer anything I wasn’t willing to follow through with.” 

Martin settles back from where he’d begun to stand. He looks down at Jon’s hand, which twitches and releases him. “I kind of- I guess I just assumed that you would be… into this.” 

“Into this?” Jon echoes. His annoyance is less inexplicable now. 

“Er, not like- not uh, in a weird way,” Martin’s quick to say, doing his best not to think _not in a sexual way_ , which really isn’t that the implication he just made? 

And this is so not the time to think of Jon in that kind of situation, of Jon leaning over him – it’s kind of gross, but Martin gets this flash of that honey stuff dripping off of him, long crystalline strings of it stretching down to dribble across Martin’s own chest. 

“Not in a weird way.” He really wishes Jon would stop doing that, tossing his own useless words back at him. 

“I-I meant, I mean, I assumed you would want to, because you’re-” This sentence, he can already tell, this sentence is not going to end well. “-Uh, because you’re, um-”

“A monster?” Jon offers. Martin winces at it, because yes that was the general idea, but Jon didn’t have to say it like that. The laugh Jon gives after is even worse, mirthless and bitter. “It’s all right, Martin. You’d hardly be the first to say it.” 

“It’s- It’s only- Prentiss, you know, and the worms, they like to, um, they like to spread? So I thought…” 

“I know what you thought,” Jon snaps. There are little anxious clusters of bees pressed up close to his skin. 

“I-” Martin has no idea what to say here. In the face of Jon’s blatant irritation with him, how his jaw muscles are clenched tight enough that beads of amber are beginning to well up in the holes near his jawline. “Sorry?” 

Jon sighs, and closes his eyes a moment. “You don’t have to apologize.”

“Right.” 

“It’s fine,” Jon tells him. And abruptly, Jon is looking at him again, has for some reason shifted closer. “I don’t want to hurt you, Martin.” 

Martin’s heart clenches unexpectedly. He wastes the time to imagine a world where none of this was necessary, where he had someone – anyone – that would drag him away from this precipice. He imagines Jon slipping into his space, he imagines his loneliness abating like fog beneath morning light. 

But all he can hear is Peter, telling him how perfect he is. Telling Martin he’ll wait for him, as long as Martin likes. 

_I’m not like Elias,_ Peter had said. His hand cupped against Martin’s cheek. _You’ll know exactly what you’re getting into. I like it better when they choose. More fun that way, isn’t it?_

“And you aren’t wrong,” Jon admits, startling Martin from his thoughts. He’s briefly lost the thread of their conversation. “They- I- _We_ can feel it. Some part of- of me does want to…” The edge of Jon’s mouth twitches upwards in the vague impression of a smile. “It’s really no surprise you’re having trouble with a Lukas.” 

Martin swallows. His tongue feels thick and clumsy in his mouth. “Were you lonely?” 

“I hadn’t thought so at the time.” 

Right. Martin remembers that, actually – Jon had said something similar during his statement. He at least has the presence of mind not to mention that he’s heard it. Now that he’s a bit more familiar with Jon he can’t imagine that particular conversation going well. 

“But now?” Martin prompts, as if he really can’t help pushing his luck. Jon glares at him but it lacks the teeth of some of his previous efforts. 

“I suppose I must have been,” he says tightly. “It hardly matters now.” 

“It matters to me,” Martin insists. Almost surprised at his own interest. At least as surprised as Jon, who’s now staring at him with a wide eyed expression that Martin can’t really read, until Jon jerks his head to the side and he’s shuttered away again. 

“Really, Martin,” Jon says, “I can’t tell you any more about the process than I already have. The circumstances weren’t – aren’t – the same. But I can’t imagine the progression of becoming, um, infested, so to speak, should be much different either way. Unless you die, of course.” 

Martin thinks Jon’s missed his point somewhere. Or simply spoken past it. Or maybe Martin missed his own point, he’s not even sure. But something in Jon’s last statement is pinging his attention more urgently. 

“Jon… Have- Have you never done this before?” he asks, equally unsure why he would have assumed so and why he _wouldn’t_ have assumed so. 

Jon stiffens in a very telling manner. “Well. I don’t exactly go around non-consensually swarming people with bees, Martin, and there aren’t many people lining up for the opportunity-”

“You have no idea what you’re doing!” Martin accuses before he can even think about it, and Jon huffs dramatically. 

“It’s not as though becoming a monster comes with a bloody instruction manual,” Jon snaps back. 

“How were you even planning on going about it then?” Martin can hear himself, of course, can hear his own voice sounding dangerously close to unhinged. 

“I- I assumed they would know what to do,” Jon says primly and-

And oh, oh god, he is talking about his bees, and now Jon is glaring at a palmful of them like they’ve each personally slighted him, which somehow tips the scales on this moment from painfully ridiculous to almost hilariously so, as Martin finds himself overcome with what can only be a hysterical fit of the giggles. Jon turns that acidic look his way next and that only makes it worse, somehow. 

“I don’t think it’s that unreasonable of a supposition,” he mutters while Martin continues to fail at stifling his slightly manic laughter. 

“Jon-” Martin tries, gasping it the way he gasps for air between frankly undignified snorts. 

“By all means,” Jon says, “Amuse yourself at my expense. Just let me know when you’re finished, won’t you?” 

“It’s not- It’s not like that,” Martin finally manages. Jon looks at him wryly, an eyebrow raised. “It isn’t.” 

He’s not sure how they manage it, but the silence that settles between them is almost comfortable. Like a bubble of tension pushing on both of them has been popped. At least, that’s how Martin feels, and Jon actually looks relaxed or as close to it as he ever seems. He doesn’t look like he’s about to bolt from the room anyway, which is pretty significant improvement in Martin’s opinion. 

Maybe the most telling is the bees, which Martin’s sort of begun to conceptualize as a big collective mood ring. They’re lazily crawling across, well, a lot of surfaces. On Jon’s skin, on the walls. Along the couch, slowly creeping in closer to Martin. He does his best not to flinch when one lands on his hand and stays there. 

“Well,” Jon says finally, looking down at Martin’s hand. “I suppose that’s- that’s it then.”

“That’s everything out on the table?”

Jon nods before he unfairly snaps his gaze back up to Martin’s. “Everything on my end.” 

The offer is unsubtly implicit here. Last chance to bail, to voice complaints or fears, to bring up secrets that might change anyone’s mind. There are lots of secrets, Martin’s startled to find, that he doesn’t want to share. Like Jon’s statement and who Martin works for. He’s alluded to Peter as much as he’s had to, but Elias-

Really, it’s better for all of them if Elias Bouchard stays as far out of their business as possible. That will be Martin’s issue to deal with, probably in the rapidly approaching near future. And now Jon has been watching him hesitate and will be wanting to know all these thoughts Martin’s wrestling with, and maybe it’s unfair of him when Jon’s been surprisingly candid himself but it’s for his own good. 

Something, he has to tell him something. Last minute jitters, a case of cold feet, something needs to come out of his mouth and apparently his brain has settled on, “Can I kiss you?” 

Yeah. Jon recoiling backwards is probably the kindest reaction Martin could have hoped for and as much as he feels like his insides are shriveling up on themselves and flaking off the walls of his abdomen, the wide-eyed, startled look on Jon’s face is actually kind of cute. Martin has lost his mind. 

“You want to kiss me?” 

Strange emphasis there, on the ‘want’ part of it instead of the ‘you’ or the ‘me,’ as if the idea of anyone kissing Jon at all is the strange thing here. And, okay, Martin tries to be honest. He’s not really a catch himself, and Jon gives off an aura about three feet in diameter of _do-not-interact_ at all times, but he’s so much Martin’s type it physically hurts and he can’t be the first one to think that. 

“I mean,” Martin says, clearing his throat. “You know. If I might, uh, die and everything. There’s really no harm in asking, right?” 

Only the harm of possibly facing crushing rejection before _dying_ a painful death. Which he’s sure he’s doomed himself to, as Jon stares at him like he’s having a hard time processing the concept of- any of it, Martin supposes. 

“I-I suppose not,” Jon says. A non-answer. 

“Right,” Martin says. Silence. Jon keeps staring at him. “So?” 

“Oh!” Jon startles as if he’d totally forgotten there was an awkward conversation to finish getting through. “Uh. You want to kiss me.” 

“Yes, Jon.” 

“Well. I’ve never quite considered myself beguiling, as it were.” Martin must have imagined the emphasis on the _be_ of beguiling, because- because Jon didn’t just make a pun about himself, even though he’s now nervously clearing his throat. “Nevermind. Uh, it’s- that would be, fine?” 

Martin’s still trying to work out the fact that Jon just tried to make a joke, and it takes his brain a moment to catch up to what he’s actually said. “I- What?” 

“If you still want to?” 

“Yes! I- I mean, yeah, no, that would be- yeah.” 

“Since you might die,” Jon says, shifting a bit closer, one corner of his mouth quirked because he’s _teasing_ Martin, and Martin does not want to die with a clarity he hasn’t felt in some time. 

“Generous of you, really.” 

Martin angles himself towards Jon, properly. He’s still got his shirt off. He doesn’t pull away when Martin cautiously reaches a hand out to cup along the intact curve of his jaw. When Martin brushes his thumb over the smooth skin there, over the pleasant scratch of stubble catching. Jon watches him the whole time, his breathing just barely quickened. It’s easy to guide him forward, less so for Martin to push himself to meet him. 

It's hesitation that makes him stop just before their lips actually meet. But Jon sighs out like Martin’s done something like a proper tease, and his eyelashes are so dark up close, flickering with the flutter of his eyelids and Marin presses forward in a surge. 

The whole thing is over fairly quickly. Nothing more scandalous than lips on lips, Jon’s surprisingly soft and yielding beneath his own, responsive and mimicking of his movements. And then it’s over, because they don’t really know each other, because Jon lets him go and Martin’s never one to push for more, even at the utter chasm of wanting that yawns briefly open in the face of Jon licking his lips as they part. 

They don’t say anything for a moment. Martin has no idea, really, what to say, but he knows better than to do something as self-deprecating as thank Jon for it. A lesson his mother had ground into him, back when they still talked about things like that. 

“Are you ready?” Jon asks quietly, back to the real matter at hand. 

Martin doesn’t know. He thinks he’ll never actually be ready. And the dumb, hopeful part of him that somehow has yet to give up is keening for him to try another way. That Jon kissed him, was willing to kiss him – that he doesn’t have to do this to escape isolation and Peter and everything else the Lonely implies. 

“I’m ready,” Martin forces himself to say. Dumb, hopeful Martin might not have given up, but he’s been tempered by reality. No one is going to come along and save him. He has to do it himself. 

“Okay.” Jon picks up the set of towels from the table, hands a few to Martin as he goes about settling the rest over the surface of the couch. 

Martin reaches a hand out and grabs his wrist. It stills Jon immediately, and that dumb part of him tries to rally again. “Please don’t leave me? Even if-”

_Even if I die. Even if I become something worse._

Jon layers his hand over Martin’s. “I won’t.”


End file.
